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FRIMEDBIO-Fri prosj.st. med.,helse,biol

AHeadForLife - Societal and environmental determinants of brain and cognition

Alternative title: AHeadForLife - samfunns- og miljøfaktorer i hjerne og kognisjon

Awarded: NOK 12.5 mill.

Cognitive function – how we attend, remember, and reason – is critical to all aspects of human life. Cognitive function affects how we handle daily tasks, but also how we make sense of the world around us and build social relationships. Cognitive function has biological underpinnings, but is also highly dependent upon environmental influences through family, education, welfare systems or living conditions. Current approaches to explain cognitive function typically do not adequately consider the dynamic relationships between genes, brain and cognition, neither reflect impacts from the society around us or the economic system we are living in. AHeadForLife will integrate these perspectives into a unified research program involving psychologists, sociologists and economists, geneticists, physicists and brain researchers. We will investigate how immediate environmental and societal factors interact with genes and the brain to affect cognition throughout life. Four levels of data are utilized, spanning population registries, online collection of cognitive and health data, in person-assessments (brain scans, cognitive tests, genetic samples) and experimental training interventions. The ambition of AHeadForLife is informing policies that can reduce social inequities and identifying behavior that can improve human welfare.

AHeadForLife will uncover how the immediate environment and societal factors shape cognitive function across the lifespan. Cognitive function is critical to all aspects of human life, spanning school, work, independent living, social relations and construction of personal narratives. Optimization of cognitive function is of enormous personal and societal importance. Cognitive function cannot be understood without integration of societal and historical knowledge, the environments we operate in, but is also a product of the brain and our genes. However, contemporary approaches to explain cognitive function typically do not adequately consider how relationships between genes, brain and cognition are dynamic and reflect impacts from the environment and the society. AHeadForLife will integrate these perspectives into a unified research program involving psychologists, sociologists and economists, geneticists, physicists and brain researchers. We will investigate how immediate environmental and societal factors interact with genes and the brain to affect cognition throughout life. Four levels of data are utilized, spanning population registries, new longitudinal collection of digital cognitive and health data for a representative sample of 100.000, in person-assessments with brain scans, genotyping, clinical and cognitive data for 8.000, and experimental intervention for 500 individuals. The ambition is to identify causal levers that raise and sustain cognition, informing policies that can reduce social inequities and identifying behaviors that can improve human welfare. We will identify environmental factors driving the dynamic relationships between genes, brain and cognitive function, timing of these influences, and how factors interact to determine cognitive function through life. The outcome will be a novel conceptualization of how brain and cognition across the lifespan result from interactions between larger societal, immediate environmental, and genetic factors.

Funding scheme:

FRIMEDBIO-Fri prosj.st. med.,helse,biol

Funding Sources